On a summer day in 1847, John Kale and his trusty mare Sally were plowing a field in preparation for a new crop of potatoes when the plow connected with something large and hard. He thought it was a rock, but after fetching a shovel and digging around the now-broken plow, he picked out the largest gold nugget ever to be found west of the Cutthroat river. In honor of the field he found it in, and its shape, he named it the golden potato.

He quit farming that very day and exchanged the golden potato at a bank for enough money to bring him and his family further west, where they founded the village of Kale, which, over one hundred years later, would later become the thriving, important city of Last Kale.

At least, that’s the story the history books provide.

This is part 26 of Vile, a novel in progress. Care to read from the beginning?